8 Jan 2009

Is that my fate?

Do they prove anything to you, these tears?

All that I had I laid outside that door
where I was told you lived, and someone took those gifts,
was it you?

Were they that worthless that no thanks was given?
That must have been the case for I heard
not one word of gratitude.

Has it ever happened that a lover courting a lover
has not offered trinkets? Surely you did
not begrudge me for that.

In the world of amorous play amongst your forest creatures
I have tried to learn some secret about love
to bring you as near as they did; for I see how happy
you made them.

The flame called the moth but the glass pane was there.
How many have died not in the fire but in the cold,
crazed in longing.

Is that fate of any heart to not reach you?

No, no, that is not the fate of any soul.

-St. John of the Cross